Press Floor

A press flywheel stands with its cover removed for decommissioning at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. The belt-driven flywheel operated a cam mechanism that pressed the briquettes, each press running four stamps, known as legs. Skylight above the machine throws direct light across the spoked wheel, picking out the rust and accumulated dust on its surface. A blue tarp covers the base of the adjacent machinery to the left. With the cover off, the spokes and rim sit fully exposed, the working face of a press that has been opened up rather than left sealed. The dust on the wheel is the residue of the line it once drove.

This flywheel belonged to one of the briquette presses supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract, which covered two factories of 2,100 tons per day capacity. The Victorian Heritage Register registers the plant as the only remaining intact assemblage of mid-twentieth-century briquetting machinery in Victoria. The factory ran on paired twelve-hour crews, with floor wash-downs at shift change-over. Briquette flow ran continuously through the multi-level factories until the August 2014 closure, when the last boiler and turbine were taken off on 8 September 2014. Brett photographed the press flywheel on 15 April 2017.